TV channels Guam

Guam has one of the oldest television traditions in the western Pacific - and today its airwaves mix local voices with the American mainstream.

How television came to Guam

Television reached Guam in 1956, when KUAM went on the air - among the earliest television stations in the western Pacific, serving an island that sits at the crossroads of America and Asia. KUAM-TV signed on 5 August 1956 on channel 8 as an NBC affiliate, at times carrying all four big American networks, while viewers waited weeks for programmes flown in from the mainland; the island counted some 30,000 television sets by 1967. Public television followed on 30 October 1970, when KGTF - today's PBS Guam - signed on; its studios stand on the University of Guam campus, and its schedule pairs American public broadcasting with local productions and coverage of the island's legislature. A second commercial station signed on in 1984 and grew into KTGM, the island's ABC and Fox affiliate. Since then the island's broadcasting has grown with cable and satellite into a dense, English-language field.

The music voice

Star 101 FM brings the music side of the island's broadcasting to the screen - the soundtrack of island life, from Hagåtña to the villages of the south. On the radio dial it is KNUT 101.1 in Tamuning, a rhythmic hit station owned by Choice Broadcasting that took the Star 101 name in October 2016.

An island crossroads

Guam's broadcasters work in American patterns - network affiliations, FCC licences, the 671 area code - yet serve a Chamorro island that wakes a day ahead of the mainland. Typhoons are a fact of island broadcasting: Typhoon Mawar in May 2023 wrecked KTGM's facilities and forced the station silent, and the ABC and Fox affiliations passed to Lilly Broadcasting, which later bought the stations and returned them to the air. The island is also a landing point for a web of Pacific submarine cables, which keep its networks tuned close to the mainland clock.

From Liberation Day in July to the election nights of the territory, Guam's broadcasters serve an island that watches the Pacific in both directions.